1.4.1-Frauleindrosselmeyer
Archivist's note: This write-up was posted several months after the other commentary. Brick!Club 1.4 - Psychological thoughts on everyone, and then RAAAAAAGE at Hugo for being a classist “Rich Saviour” asshole when he should have been horrible about the Thenardiers being abusive fucks instead of Mme’s taste in literature This got REALLY long. Turns out, I have a LOT of feelings about class privilege, and I am REALLY ANGRY WITH HUGO for conflating “abusive fuckwits” with “lower-middle-class.” Oh, Fantine. I’m sure Hugo wanted to make some contrast between Tholomyes’* cynicism despite leading a charmed life, and your assumption that people will not screw you over despite being, y’know, constantly screwed over, but at this point you’re seeming more pathologically inflexible than principled. You’re going to leave your kid with these people - maybe ask around the village first, to make sure they’re not total monsters? The line contrasting her “Well of course I’m going to let Cosette have her clothes, duh” with Thenardier’s ultra-subtle “GIVE US ALL THE CLOTHINGS SO WE MAY SELL THEM” is super adorable, but also heartbreaking. there any connection between Tholomyes and Ptolemy? I’m not seeing it, but then I don’t know any classical history. I’m tentatively reading Fantine as one of Harlow’s monkeys, so attachment-disordered and desperate for love that she’ll latch on to anything that seems remotely nice (this video is heartbreaking, be warned) even if that thing is really not good for it (like the monkeys clinging to the fluffy “mother” that gives no food, over the food dispenser), and from what I’ve heard about Cosette it appears to be much the same deal for her and Valjean - F and C hang on to whoever’s nice to them, and we just have to hope that that person is a Valjean rather than a Tholomyes. And that’s why Fantine trusts the Thenardiers - Tholomyes was nice (and possibly a surrogate father figure), Mme T had kids who looked well cared-for. Fantine n’est qu’un enfant soi-meme, she just wants a family for her and her kid Man, remind me never to move to small-village C19 France. The Mob Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAZmHrtloD8 ("Raise the flag / sing the song / here we come, we’re fifty strong / and fifty Frenchmen can’t be wrong / Kill the Beast!") has nothing on Digne and Montfermeil. Everyone wizard knows Harry’s living with the Dursleys, yet no-one bothers to check he’s doing okay. Scumbags. The psych continues to be spot-on; the implication that Mme Thenardier’s just a big ball of resentment about her thwarted dreams which finally finds a socially acceptable outlet in poor Cosette, and Eponine and Azelma allying themselves with the oppressor. I did a psych placement with some kids who’d been really badly hurt, and family therapy is really interesting (also frequently really awful), and this scapegoating is an absolutely classic dynamic. And making her eat with the animals (hell, the village even giving her an animal nickname) self, don’t get bogged down in the sad, focus on stuff you can do, like analysing the origin of evil and remembering that in a few years you’ll be qualified and in a position to actually help all the Cosettes, that is what Hugo was on about with the passage where Myriel freaks out over the death penalty and how “he believed as much as he could,” THAT is the lesson "These beings belonged to that bastard class composed of coarse people who have been successful, and of intelligent people who have descended in the scale, which is between the class called "middle" and the class denominated as "inferior," and which combines some of the defects of the second with nearly all the vices of the first, without possessing the generous impulse of the workingman nor the honest order of the bourgeois." And THIS is the point when I nearly threw my Kindle across the bus in rage this morning - screw you, Hugo, what’ve you got against the lower middle class? Reading this was like a punch in the stomach. WHAT THE HELL. I know Hugo’s long dead but he can sit his metaphorical ass down while I school him about being a paternalistic rich asshole, I AM SO DISAPPOINTED WITH YOU, MAN, I THOUGHT I KNEW YOU. Columbina made the “Toddlers and Tiaras Mom” comparison, and someone said something about calling your kids Eponine and Azelma and reading romances was probably the equivalent of naming your kid Renesmee today, and ARGH. The Thenardiers are horrible dreadful awful people, but that is not because they are Les Miserables’ Jersey Shore, and if Hugo thinks so, even if he invented the “petty bourgeoisie” trope, then he can go fuck himself with a baguette. (It’s possible he’s saying the LMC is evil by definition because at this point in history maybe only cream and bastards rose, so anyone who got out of the working class was obviously an evil git? But on the other hand presumably he wasn’t because Feuilly exists, plus he said that if society cast a shadow that made people criminal then it was society’s fault more than individual criminals, so even if the entirety of the petite bourgeoisie was screwing other people over to get themselves out of the abject misery of being a prole then that’s…still not a thing individual LMC people deserve to be vilified for? So I’m not sure what his problem is with them. And yes, I’m assuming the Thenardiers are Symbolic of the entire class, partly because they were introduced that way. I may be wrong. Please tell me I’m wrong.) Working-class people who have suddenly jumped to a higher income/education/fame bracket get a crappy deal socially - see Pygmalion, see Educating Rita, see the Wormwoods and the Dursleys, see Honey Boo Boo and TOWIE and The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Poor people are loud, they talk funny, they wear funny clothes, they’re concerned with money, and when they have it they might like to show it off and enjoy it. And…that’s kind of acceptable, as long as they’re impoverished? As soon as they get rich enough, working-class people are meant to immediately assimilate into the organic-eating, gym-going, “tasteful”-dressing middle-class lifestyle, and if they continue to care about when the money’s going to run out (which is a fear people tend to have forever when they’ve grown up on the breadline, I’m not so sure Mme Thenardier making sure they could afford to keep Cosette was an inherent warning sign of her avarice), we vilify them as chavs and trailer trash. Ugh, and now I’ve seen it, I can’t stop seeing Hugo being paternalistic about his socialism - Feuilly being the only working-class member of the Amis (yes? I’m getting half my info on the Brick from fanon, but the musical!Amis always sat uncomfortably with me for being privileged opera-going students telling everyone else to rise up and join them), Valjean jumping up in the world to control the means of production only after he’s had a new life literally handed to him on a silver platter (well, candlesticks) by someone educationally and socially firmly in the upper brackets. The “noble poor” must be lifted out of their poverty by the educated! They can’t help themselves, partly because of the system, but partly because that idea is threatening to the people on top! There is literally no excuse for her behaviour towards Cosette, and I can’t help thinking from what we know of her backstory that…Mme Thenardier’s story’s not dissimilar to Fantine’s? Both in love with an ideal that they dream of yet ultimately screws them over (Tholomyes vs dreams of marrying a soldier, reading romantic novels), both wanting something better for their kids (for Fantine to stop walking and go “Holy crap, those kids look well and happy,” presumably E and A must’ve been in pretty rude health? And Eponine, at least, learns to read), both giving their kids ridiculous names representing their mothers’ dreams (romance novels, being petted). And that makes the abuse seem even worse, because Fantine did not turn into an abusive monster in similar circumstances, but…some of the rest of what Hugo thinks is crappy about Mme Thenardier is actually okay? YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO WANT BETTER FOR YOUR KIDS, THAT IS A GOOD THING, EVEN IF THINKING YOU MUST SCREW OTHER PEOPLE OVER TO HELP YOUR KIDS IS A BAD THING. And the romance novels thing is just bullshit. You wanna read crappy novels to take your mind off your crappier life? DO IT. I spent a lot of her introduction wailing, because THERE IS SO MUCH OF THE HORRIFIC ABOUT THIS CHARACTER AND HER APPALLING BEHAVIOUR, and yet Hugo finds time to judge her for her crappy taste in chick!lit ? Get some fucking perspective, man. I’m pro-education, okay, who isn’t, I think education’s great and fantastic and so does Hugo, and I’m willing to delineate between being an educated person and merely being literate (which just increased Valjean’s “hate”, until it was tempered with some moral wisdom courtesy of Myriel). But sometimes you need to get rich without having the chance of an education, so your kids, the next generation, can be properly educated (“sometimes” nothing, that’s pretty much always the case today, it’s tough to learn when you’re broke and starving). And yeah, I think people who’ve learned stuff are probably better placed to be running the show than people who haven’t, I’m elitist that way. But I think it’s pretty shitty of him to be down on a woman who was literate during this period in history, on the basis that Mme Thenardier is ‘frittering’ her literacy on 50 Shades of Grey instead of educating herself further with whatever philosophical treatise du jour the bourgeois were reading. Like, most of the people in that village probably can’t read, why the hell would she read Voltaire? So she can start a book club of one? So she can make obscure classical references no-one else understands, Hugo? Anyone who’s seen Beauty and the Beast knows being The Only Highbrow In The Village doesn’t endear you to anyone. Let the woman read what makes her happy, chrissakes, “But Twilight!” is not evidence of moral turpitude. The introduction of the Thenardiers just reeks of “Yeah, they’re richer, but they’re not classy. Ew, look at them, trying to rise above their station without the assistance of rich people! They must have CHEATED somehow, no-one can stop being a prole without our help!” I can only assume the birth of the lower middle class was so intensely threatening in the shifting power structures of post-revolutionary France, that everyone higher up the tree was terrified of them shaking the trunk - and felt forced to demonise them to make themselves feel better. Hell yeah, Hugo, I’m taking this personally; these are my people. I’m first-generation middle class. I went to a really good college and there were working class and first-gen middle class kids there who worked their asses off, and their parents had usually worked their asses off so their kids could go there. And I have met so, so many people in London who barely speak English and live in crappy council estates where half the wall has been damp for six months, and have escaped from absolute squalor, and their kids’ skin being 40% burned off in warzones, and infibulation, and their parents being killed in Allied forces bombings, and being kidnapped and tortured by their own governments - and when you speak to them about their children, their eyes light up, man, every single time, because their two girls want to be a doctor and a teacher and their tiny boy works really hard at maths, and these people are so, so proud that they can give their children better than they themselves received. Poor people are allowed to aspire to something better for their kids. They’re allowed to climb to their own light, and they’re allowed to be loud and talk funny and wear funny clothing and annoy Professor Henry Higgins while they do it. They’re allowed to read Udolpho. Social mobility is a good thing, and it involves more than rich people starting to call their kids Chardonnay and poor people starting to call their kids Tarquin! If they don’t have to wait for rich people to help them out of poverty, if they can climb up through a shite system, if they can hope for something better for their kids without having to wait around for some students to start a rebellion or some philanthropists to promote a more generous trickle-down economy - then, Hugo, who are you to demonise them for having agency? Don’t make the ex-working class the bad guys here, Hugo. They’re not the swells who run this show, they’re still the 99%. Screw you. Commentary Wackyshenanigans ALL OF THIS. Pilferingapples AAAH THE MONKEYS YES, I think that describes Fantine *perfectly*. Someday when I have less of a tempest in my skull I would adore talking sociology with you, because even at my best I am not that coherent, and today I poured my cereal in the coffee press and cornflake coffee is just not that effective, whoops. But the Great Upper Class Saviour stuff I’ve thought about before,when we were actually at that chapter? So hopefully I can be a LITTLE BIT coherent here. Because I distinctly read the Thenardiers as being a symptom of society NOT LETTING THEM RISE UP FARTHER. Like, this is what happens when smart, ambitious people are denied legitimate avenues to advancement? When Mme. Thenardier is given nothing to do with her learning except read romances (and probably not a lot of people to discuss them with, as you mentioned) , when a plotter like Thenardier is allowed nothing to plot FOR, this is what happens. Anyway, that’s how it reads to me. And part of that may be foreknowledge of The Parts With The Amis And Also Obsessively Thinking About This. (takes a moment to bewail my darlings being so easily misunderstood in the musical) Because, yes, Feuilly is the only explicitly working class member of the group (and we know he’s awesome, yep yep. Not because he’s educated, but because of WHY HE CHOSE TO BE EDUCATED and gosh, wow, I can and will go on about these boys for months. ) BUT! He is not the only non-rich guy! Bossuet! Lesgles! is explicitly the child of the fluctuating lower/lower middle classes! His father “managed to acquire some land and a house” which he lost in speculation— and this is explicitly because Lesgles has atrocious luck and not through any personal fault. And! He’s not especially education-obsessed! But still one of the most definitely decent people in the book! And a major social factor in his very political circles too. Actually only four of the Amis can be considered explicitly wealthy— Enjolras and Prouvaire are only sons and wealthy, Courfeyrac comes from an apparently pretty wealthy family with a fancy de and everything , and Bahorel’s parents are keeping him in style (although less than some of the dandies of M-sur-M, even not allowing for inflation. That’s…that’s SOME CASH being thrown around there).There’s no saying Joly and Combeferre’s families aren’t sacrificing like mad to put them through school. And! Speak of class mobility! Bahorel’s family are peasants! And not like, peasants of the distant past; given his age (‘young boys’, I’m laughing so hard, maybe they cut him out of the play so they can keep that line because seriously he’s p.much old enough to actually be Cosette’s or Marius’ DAD) they were peasants, and children OF peasants, who lived through the Revolution. His family might be well off *now* but it’s surely not something they can take for granted— and oh WOW he is absolutely not fawning towards any general or potential bourgeoisie ‘saviors’ that might appear, he pretty much weaponizes all the class expectations going against him and throws it back. And oh yeah, again, MAJOR social/political presence in the revolutionary circles. So I don’t think, from context, that Hugo’s trying to demonize the working poor and rising poor here. I totally see how that reading comes out! But between the Amis, the nuns, Perpetue, Gavroche, Myriel’s bandits…I really think what’s under fire through the Thenardiers is the system that gives them so little cause to be anything else. Robertawickham (reply to Pilferingapples) Reblogging for PilferingApples’s excellent commentary and summary of the Amis’ finances/class status. Frauleindrosselmeyer (reply to Pilferingapples) This is a nicer reading and I am…Grantairing it, in that I would like very much to believe it and hug it and die holding its hand - but I am still wary of how he’s trying to do this? My problem is that he doesn’t have to condemn the Thenardiers to condemn the system; he could make sympathetic ambitious innkeepers just like he makes sympathetic single mums! But they are introduced first-off as explicitly “''part of that bastard class…which combines some of the defects of the second with nearly all the vices of the first''," and they are so far the ONLY representatives of that class, and then they are monsters. He could have condemned the system by making them just generally not terribly upstanding and have miserable lives and yet be sympathetic - but what they do to Cosette is waaaaay past the Moral Event Horizon. A contemptible system doesn’t make people do that (and if he’s arguing a crappy system drives people to severe abuse, I’d argue that’s denying their free will, which is also kind of paternalistic). And being a book full of symbolism, my temptation is to read them as representative of that entire class until another representative shows up. At which point I WILL OBVIOUSLY REVISE MY OPINION, and I expect I will reblog everything I’ve ever written with grovelly addenda about how wrong I was. (Am I the only person in Brick!Club who hasn’t already read the Brick? Every other commenter is talking about how this half of the book contrasts with the Amis, while I am thinking ‘Oooh, I wonder when we’ll meet Javert! Unexpected Feels! Plot twists!’) If the book divides thematically into “Before Amis” and “Anno Amis,” and B.A. is hopeless but A.A. is not, then that sort of works, because everything is awful with the Thenardiers, and then…Bahorel and Bossuet happen! People can do well for themselves without also being abusive! Ambitious people are not doomed to become evil! And if Hugo is doing that, then I guess I’ll forgive him when the Amis roll into town? But reading it for the first time…I think if you’re trying to condemn a system, showing the people it has screwed over horribly dehumanising a little girl is a weird and unsuccessful way to try to make your point? And if that’s his point, I'' obviously missed it. …but then I haven’t been in an English class since I was 15, I miss a lot of stuff, also I struggle to deal with people who are supposedly psychologically real and also symbols '''Pilferingapples (reply to Frauleindrosselmeyer's reply)' Wait, does that make my commentary Enjolras? In which case WELCOME TO THE FRENCH MINISERIES I GUESS, Revolution and Cupcakes for all!* And AGH the line between character and Ideal Symbol with Hugo characters is a PROBLEM. That…that’ll come up when we reach the Amis, too. Personally all my inclinations are towards Characters as Characters (in Which The Thenardiers are Fine, Because Sometimes People Are Horrible) but there’s really no missing that ev.er.y.one in this book is also pulling double duty as at least ONE kind of symbol. Or that What Hugo is Trying To Say is often not in line with What He is Actually Saying Yikes Wow the Bit With The Blindness, no. I do think there might be something to be said for a B.A./ A.A. read on this book! When we’re all through, I’d love to talk it over with you. Meantime, yes, I think you may be our only first- time reader! I mean, this is the first I’ve realized you actually ARE a first timer, it’s so unexpected. Which means you have an incredibly valuable POV! So while the rest of us talk about how this or that detail plays out and changes interpretations, you’re saying how it looks on its own, and I think that’s really useful to hear, and I’d given up on any of us having that perspective. So now I’m even happier to have you here, besides the great medical info and general quality commentary you’ve been giving us! YAY NEW READERS! Re: your last paragraph, I would offer a mention of the cycle of violence perhaps being exemplified here? And then I would, regretfully, bow out of that particular discussion, because I have learned I cannot talk about the Lark without making a series of complicated Sanity Checks that I will inevitably fail, and I’d like to come back to proper !clubbing this month. *there was a French miniseries adaptation. It featured an alarmingly bouncy, happy Sunshine!jolras, and this is me saying it. Sarah1281 (reply to Frauleindrosselmeyer's reply) I also find it kind of weird that one of the ways he goes after the Thénardiers is because of their weird between-classness when he portrays Valjean and Cosette doing the same as positives. Perhaps he knew their type and didn’t like thieving between-class innkeepers? But there is definitely a point in making them not sympathetic and that point is the plot. Fantine has never had any kind of guidance in her life and so despite being a good and innocent girl it leads her astray time after time after time and ultimately kills her. She just trusts too easily and people take advantage of that trust and that is how she ended up alone with Cosette in the first place. She trusted too easily here, partly out of desperation, and was screwed over again and will be screwed over in the future. And if the Thénardiers were sympathetic poor who really did try their best to treat Cosette as well as they could and only expected as much money from Fantine as they could afford then the story would have turned out very differently. Without all the letters demanding more money perhaps no one would have noticed and investigated and Fantine wouldn’t have been fired. But even if she had been then she could have easily paid off a reasonable price for Cosette while still having money to survive herself and she wouldn’t have ended up literally working to death. Fantine’s story is not a proper tragedy without the Thénardiers demanding more and more from her every time they turn around because of their own greed, callousness, and inability to stay out of debt. And Valjean wouldn’t have such a pressing need to rescue Cosette and to keep her with him despite the risks if they were better people. He could have just sent them money, asked for Cosette, and there she would be. Or he could have paid them a great deal of money to keep Cosette if they were sympathetic but had no money to keep Cosette and then she would be even safer than if she had stayed with him. They HAVE to be bad and screw Cosette and Fantine over or else Fantine probably has a perfectly decent if poor life and Valjean just goes on the run by himself again and lives and dies completely alone. There’s really no story to be told in the Thénardiers being good but more people who don’t want to hurt anyone. And I don’t think we’re supposed to go too much by free will. I can’t quite decide if Hugo was contending with people who thought free will was all that affected people’s actions and so if Valjean stole some bread and Fantine had Cosette out of wedlock it was their choice, they have no one else to blame, and they chose to be bad people or if he was dealing with a complete lack of free will and people thinking that they did these things because they are bad people and will always be bad people because it’s just who they are and not something they can choose to stop doing. But either way the point is that there is free will but that’s not the end-all be-all and we’ve already seen that before the Thénardiers. Valjean didn’t steal because he was a bad person or just chose to do so in a vacuum. It was a famine and he had seven small children as well as his sister and himself that were literally starving. He didn’t choose to go from a decent guy to the bad person he was at the time he stole the silver because he wanted to be a bad person, it was prison that did that to him. Fantine didn’t choose to turn bitter and start hating the world just because, it was the universal condemnation and desperate circumstances she was facing alone that did it. The Thénardiers are not so mercenary and giving a damn about literally no one but themselves because they are just complete monsters who get their kicks from being complete monsters; they are desperate and always in debt and slowly facing annihilation. They do make some choices to be bad and abuse Cosette and they didn’t have to do that even if they still milked Fantine for everything she had. But it was only partly their choice since these things never happen in a vacuum and partly their own attempts to deal with and reaction to the circumstances they find themselves in. But even in their class they also have far more sympathetic children we can look to. Some people are just not very nice and no matter how sad their backstory is or how hopeless their situation they are just bad people. The fact that they are only bad because of their circumstances (something Hugo has people, like Valjean, claim a lot) does not change that their circumstances made them bad people. If it were all sympathetic people doing the best they could then we would have a hell of a lot less misery in this book. Part of the tragedy of a system like this is that it can turn its victims into perpetrators in their own right and it just keeps on going. I think it’s an excellent way to make a point because this is what the system drives people to. It doesn’t just make them poor but virtuous and bravely trying to make a living. It can twist people and just make things worse for everybody and think of the future that Cosette would have in their care. Assuming she stayed with them and didn’t die she wouldn’t grow up a good girl like her mother. Victims make victims make victims make victims. Things do get a bit dicey when everyone represents things but at some point they’re going to have to have not-nice people and it would be gratuitous to introduce another pair of innkeepers just to prove that it’s possible for poor innkeepers to not be terrible people. I don’t think ambition at all is portrayed as evil just because the Thénardiers are bad people (what is their ambition anyway? Steal all of the things?) and I don’t think the existence of the Thénardiers ruins the themes of the book which don’t really seem to have much to do with ambition at all. Doeskin-pantaloons Oh wow yes adsdfasdfasdglkj yes I agree with you 24601%